After months of pressure from investors, Cook indicated on several recent occasions that Apple's board has stepped up discussions about what to do with its growing cash position, which at this point likely exceeds $100 billion.

Cook has conceded that it simply does not need that much cash to run the company's ongoing business.

Apple could, has and will continue to invest in the business in various ways: making pre-payments to insure component supply, opening new retail stores and developing new products. The company is preparing to build a new office complex in Cupertino, and recently opened a large new data center in North Carolina. But for all that, the cash keeps piling higher and higher.

Keep in mind that only about a third of the company's cash is actually held in the U.S. The rest is offshore - and bringing it back to the U.S. in order to pay it out as dividends or to use it to buy back stock would incur a substantial tax penalty. As noted in a recent post, Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimates that the company would have to fork over to Uncle Sam about 30% of any cash that was repatriated from overseas.

That said, here are the most obvious options:

They could do a one-time dividend. That seems like the least appealing option. A one-time payout would reduce the cash position and given a windfall to holders, but do nothing to lure new investors, or change the basic perception of the company.

They could buyback a pile of stock. Not something they have done in the past, but in the past they didn't have $100 billion in the bank.

They could establish a regular dividend policy.

They could enhance their dividend by borrowing a huge chunk of cash at low rates and then pay it back over time with their mammoth cash flow. Bernstein's Sacconaghi has proposed the company sell $50 billion or even $100 billion in debt.

They could do a giant acquisition.

My own suspicion is that they start paying a regular dividend. Were the company to generate a yield of 2.5%, they would be paying out $14.65 a share annually, or $13.65 billion a year. That would be a pretty conservative approach given how much they have - and the rate at which the cash is piling up. Paying a dividend would, among other things, provide a way for the company to lure one group of investors that have never been willing to buy the stock: institutions that only buy dividend-paying stocks.

Of course, they could simply announce that they have decided to do nothing: but who holds a press conference to announce that?